Lifting helpless bedridden patients with permanent or temporary loss of mobility from their beds to a bathtub for bathing is important because such patients need regular sanitary cares to avoid skin sores and infections, especially when they are lying for a long period of time on their backs. Unhygienic patients often exacerbate their conditions and threaten other patients and the environment of the hospital in general. This problem is especially true in hospitals of third world countries. Therefore, there is a need for regular moving and bathing of patients.
The act of lifting a patient out of the bed is strenuous especially when the patient is heavy. Usually, nurses use a draw sheet whereupon a patient rests to help in turning and lifting the patient onto a hospital cart. However, moving a patient using this method can be dangerous because the nurses can slip their grasps of the bed sheet and drop the patient especially when the patient is heavy. As such, injuries to the nurses may occur. Furthermore, hospital carts are cumbersome and require a lot of space to store them.
The above described problems are especially true when patients are cared for at home. Some patients stay at home and under the care of loved ones. The difficulties of moving a patient from a bedroom to a bathroom are significantly exacerbated. Every time, especially at night without a nurse present, the patient needs to be cleaned and bathed, the loved ones at home would have a lot of problems taking care of that patient.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,539,941 of Fuller discloses a support frame positioned over a hospital bed to assist in lifting and turning a patient on a sheet. In addition to the lift mechanism, the frame has a carriage mechanism which can carry a lifted patient beyond the side or the end of the bed. The patient can also be lifted from the bed, and the patient is transported to other locations in the hospital without severe physical handling. A cart is used to bath a patient. A drain pan is placed under the patient to catch bath water and return the water to a drain water tank on the cart.
Fuller's support frame has complex design and is usually expensive. Moreover, such support frame still requires transporting patients by means of a wheel chair or a hospital cart which does not have the capability to lift and place that patient into a bathtub. Nurses still need to physically lift that patient and carry him or her over into a bathtub.
Furthermore, other transport devices such as those described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,379,486 to Cassidy cannot provides nurses lifting of patients out of a wheelchair or a hospital cart and putting those patients right into the bed or bathtub without using physical handling.
Therefore what is needed is a cost-effective patient transport apparatus to and from a patient bed to a bathtub that assists nurses in lifting and carrying patients to and from a hospital bed to a bathtub. Furthermore, what is needed is a patient transport apparatus that can reach under hospital beds in order to reach to patients and lift them out of bed without physical handling from nurses. Yet, what is needed is a patient transport apparatus that can place patients right into a bathtub without physical lifting from nurses. Finally, what is needed is a patient transport apparatus that is compact and conveniently stored away without occupying a large space either in a hospital or at home.